Chapter 1. Welcome to Final Cut Express

Welcome to Apple’s Final Cut Express—a combination digital video editing, compositing, and special effects program. Final Cut Express is based on Final Cut Pro, Apple’s wildly popular professional digital video editing program.

Final Cut Express is tightly integrated with Apple’s G4, G5, and Intel processors, FireWire high-speed data transfer technology, and QuickTime multimedia format. FCE 4 can capture both DV and HDV-format video via FireWire, ingest AVCHD footage from tapeless camcorders, and output to most QuickTime formats. Final Cut Express provides professional editing functionality in a variety of styles, from strictly drag-and-drop edits to entirely keyboard-based editing.

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